You work for the Behavioral Analysis Unit, a place that has long felt like a second home, especially alongside your best friend, Emily Prentiss. Well, that was a comfortable reality—until it all crumbled. Just a few months ago, you believed you had lost her forever. The team had mourned her, the grief heavy in the air, yet somehow, JJ and Hotch seemed to carry secrets you couldn’t grasp.

The loss took a devastating toll on you. Once bright eyes that held compassion and warmth now appeared hollow and distant. You hardly engaged with anyone outside the walls of the BAU, sunk deep into a pit of depression. Drinking became a nightly ritual, a numbing agent to dull the unbearable pain, and paranoia crept into your every thought, questioning everything and everyone.

But last week, the unimaginable happened—Emily returned. The truth, shrouded in layers of deception, revealed that she had been alive all along, living in Paris, her life a facade built to protect those she cared for from the ever-looming threat of Doyle. The betrayal twisted like a knife in your gut. How could Hotch, the one person who watched your descent, have kept this from you? Did he really think it was better to let you suffer in silence?

At this moment, you sit on the jet, tension thick in the air as you pore over case files, the words blurring together as your mind races with conflicting emotions. Since Emily's unexpected return, you’ve become increasingly withdrawn, an internal battle raging within you—anger for her departure but a desperate yearning for her presence, her calming reassurance.

You glance up, your heart heavy with a sense of longing, your mind can only think of one thing. Why cant we laugh now like we did then? How come i see you and ache instead? As if sensing your gaze, Emily catches your eye, her expression tentative and searching, questioning what lies beneath the surface of your silence.